311003
Euclid Corridor Oral History Project
Interview with Judy Martin
Interview by Shannon Shuler
Facilitator was Dr. Mark Souther
October 24, 2005
7:00 PM
Cleveland State University
Wall of Sorrow/ History of East Cleveland
SHULER:
Today is Monday October 24, 2005, and this is the beginning of an interview with Judy Martin in room G27 in the Music and Communications building of Cleveland State University. My name is Shannon Shuler and I’ll be the interviewer. This interview will be done in connection with the Euclid Corridor Project.
SHULER:
Before we begin actually talking about the topic can you tell me when and where you were born?
MARTIN:
I was born January 21st, 1941 in Tacoma Washington.
S:
Ummm… Can you tell me a little about yourself and your background?
MARTIN:
I grew up in Tacoma and came out to Cleveland in 1967. I graduated from high school in Tacoma and I had I came to Cleveland and got married and had two children I worked as a secretary in different places since then and off and on for the last nineteen/eighteen years eighteen or nineteen years at Jones Day. A couple other law firms before that and I founded Survivors Victims of Tragedy as a support group for those of us who have lost someone to violence. I’m a member of Black on Black, V.O.I.C.E.S., the Task Force, the Million Mom group and I’m an ilk.
SHULER:
Where do you currently reside?
MARTIN:
I live in Willow Arms in Euclid Ohio.
SHULER:
How would you compare that community to East Cleveland?
MARTIN:
Similar to where I live. I don’t feel any difference when I’m in either place, a...a because it is a suburb. Some of the house might be newer or bigger with different kinds of lawns or grass areas because houses in older areas were built closer together and it’s just a different neighborhood but to me, it’s the same.
SHULER:
The people just seem the same?
MARTIN:
Yeah
SHULER:
Since you came to Cleveland, the city of Cleveland, how have you seen it change over the years?
MARTIN:
It’s grown so much, it’s expanded, new buildings, total different skyline as far as downtown goes lots of changes.
SHULER:
You said you came to Cleveland in 1967; What do you remember from like the sixties and seventies?
MARTIN:
Then my world in Cleveland was on the East Side. I came to Cleveland and I lived on 82nd and Quincy, right in the middle of whatever anybody calls the ghetto, the inner city. It was I guess a couple of years after the Huff riots, but the minute I walked there I walked the streets I’ve never felt anything but welcome and generosity and it’s been great. Of course things back then of course I was nineteen years old, that’s so long ago you look at things differently. I was having my first child and I had a second child and your all into marriage and all that kinds of stuff. My world revolved around Quincy and Cedar and Central when I went to work, work and home.
SHULER:
In today’s society, like, I grew up in, I’ve come to Cleveland more recently that I’ve grown up and I’m in college and everything, I live in Parma and it’s known for its Polish ways and very little racial integration. Would you say that there is more violence; people see more violence in East Cleveland even though it may not really be there?
MARTIN:
I think it’s reported that way. By East Cleveland are you talking about the town of East Cleveland or the town of East Cleveland? Cause there’s a difference. And East Cleveland the city has a reputation of being a very violent place. I have to tell you that I’ve been going through there and among there; true I don’t live in East Cleveland but I live near East Cleveland and I’m there a lot with meetings with Black on Black, and the Wall and other things and all I’ve met are lots of nice people.
SHULER:
When I went down to visit the Wall I got the same kind of reactions. I was a little nervous going down there just because of everything I’ve heard through the media and the news and everything, but just like you said everyone was very willing to give me whatever kind of information I wanted. There was not hostility or anything.
MARTIN:
That’s people perceptions, when I moved to Cleveland and like I said my life was 82nd and Quincy. The first time we went on the west side, on the way back everyone in the car went [sigh] we made it back alive. Too because maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with the west side and the hatred wasn’t there but the perception is there and now, Cleveland is truly integrated and true there are pockets that aren’t but it is very integrated on the west side and the east side.
SHULER:
You’re a very active member of the community. You’ve already said the different organizations you belong too. Can you tell me why that is?
MARTIN:
I’ve, I don’t know. I always have wanted to be part of something, an organization that is doing something. When the kids were little I was part of Head Start forever way beyond the time when my kids were in Head Start and involved with the kids in their sports and a little bit of PTA when they were little, and a..a..a you have to be involved, you have to try and do things with people, with the community and if not with the community where you live somewhere with in the greater community that you are apart of.
SHULER:
You don’t have to answer this question if you do not want to but, had your son not been killed, do you think, everyone wants to be an advocate for nonviolence but, do you think you would be as active as you are now?
MARTIN:
Probably not. I would have woken up but until it hits you and you don’t know what the enormity of it is, you just don’t understand it; you don’t know what that other family is really going through. It’s not the same as losing your mother or father when their in there 60’s or 70’s or hopefully their 80’s or 90’s, it’s not like losing someone to illness it’s just not the same. When your child is murdered your whole life changes but then I’ve met hundreds of families since then whose children have been murdered and it’s not in them to be as involved as I am I think I have gotten involved in this area because I was always involved in something. So it was a naturally progressing for me to seek out a group fighting against the violence. To find a way to do something or try to do something.
SHULER:
Has becoming active helped you cope with it; you can never actually get over it obviously but…
MARTIN:
Well I think in ways it has. Friends and people have seen me in this, want me to stop because they see what it is does to you as well; but it is something I have to do, this is not a choice on my part anymore. It never was once Chris was killed, and I didn’t want anyone else joining him. He almost lost one of his best friends at the same time, it could have been a double homicide or if Kevin had been in the car it could have been a triple homicide but you just don’t know. So we have to try and make a change, we have to try and find the kids before they make the choice to do this because when Chris was killed two lives, two homes shattered. True Chris is gone forever but the young man who killed him he’s gone for and awful long time and that’s two families totally disrupted ours permanently, theirs maybe differently but its’ still a disruption its still a total disambiguation to his children, he had a two year old son, how old is his son going to be when he gets out, if he gets out, if he survives his experience. I don’t know if that answers the question but..
SHULER:
Very much so.
SHULER:
You said that you founded Survivors Victims of Tragedy. Can you just explain more about what that is?
MARTIN:
Well, when I joined Black on Black after Chris was killed, we are an activist organization. Now the members of Black on Black are extremely supportive but I was looking for a group where we just talked. And helped each other try to survive another day. Just to have a place where you knew exactly why I felt like I felt or as close to exactly as can be. I met some people from V.O.I.C.E.S., which is a support group that was started years ago but we’ve become more of an activist organization as well, so we didn’t have meetings where we just sat and talked. We were always trying to plan something to make a change and after a couple years I just wanted to start my own group. I called Reverend Wait at Antioch and said what can I do? This was around the holiday times, this was in 1997, the end of 1996 and holidays I don’t know why they are so bad, it wasn’t like Chris would’ve stayed home just because it was a holiday, he would’ve been everywhere just like Johnny was, visiting friends. You’re never home, it’s just the different and she helped me. She gave me a place at Antioch to have a group and we started meeting there in January of 1997 and we’ve been meeting there every since then. Rev. McMiccle and Rev Wait have been very generous with space
SHULER:
How large has the group gotten over the years?
MARTIN:
It’s funny, it’s a group that sometimes has had fifteen or twenty people there, and sometimes it’s just two or three. It depends on who needs to come at that time. I found that the group more serves a purpose that once they now about the group, they can call, they don’t have to come to a meeting. I’ve heard from people that I’ve never met but they’ve gotten the number. Then I’ll hear from them again two or three years later but they call when they need. So that the group serves a purpose that way as well.
SHULER:
You said that you’re a member of Black on Black, and Survivors Victims of Tragedy, are there any other organizations that you may not be involved in that are involved in the fight against violence?
MARTIN:
I’m not sure there are organizations. That might have that as one of their committees but our main focus as far as Black on Black goes is fighting against violence, against everybody, not just black people but anybody. But we do have committees that do try to help in other subjects too; education and health care and police brutality and discrimination and housing and employment. People come to us will all these different kinds of needs that they want us to try and help them with. We do the best we can. There is the TASK FORCE for community mobilization, V.O.I.C.E.S., Million Mom group, there are a couple of other support groups out there but I’m not aware of any other group in Cleveland that does what Black on Black does or the Task Force along with V.O.I.C.E.S. and Survivors because we all work together.
SHULER:
I’m going to switch topics now and concentrate on the Wall. Can you tell us what the Wall of Sorrow is?
MARTIN:
The Wall of Sorrow is the names of children and young adults between the ages of birth through twenty five who have been killed in Cuyahoga County since 1990. That number is now up to 996 or 998, you’d think that I’d have it burned in my brain but it changes everyday, 998 is the count. I have now since 1990 and that is I picked the 25 years age, just a quarter of a century, true I wanted to include my son, he was 23 when he was killed. Most people say that it is eighteen and under but just because you’re twenty one or twenty two and you think that you’re an adult ,you’re not an adult all the time, you don’t know that until your fifty and you still wonder when you’ll be an adult . Through V.O.I.C.E.S. we started talking with Mayor White wondering about trying to get a memorial and that didn’t work out. Then Art McKoy from Black on black kept bugging me and bugging me until I got the portable wall that we carried for a number of years. Then one day he took me out of the Black on Black office and said let’s put it on the building across the street. The building that had been abandoned for I don’t know how long, maybe twenty years, and it was a terrible looking building. He said do it. So I found a way to do it with the help of the community and members of the Million Mom group, Interact, Survivors members, a few members of Black on Black, we boarded it up, we painted it, cleaned up the outside and Fast Signs made the Wall for me. We used to want to have a granite wall. I thought we’ll have a memorial like the Vietnam Wall but that would’ve been a permanent wall, it would have been a non extending wall because unfortunately kids are still killing each other. Young people are still killing each other everyday or someone is still killing a young person everyday. When we put it up on the building it doesn’t look as fancy as a granite wall in a park and all that, but people put pictures up there, poems, flowers, and candles. Some families have come up there and they are not alone. You’re never alone when you go to the Wall, every time I’ve gone to the Wall, nobody knows that I’m going at that moment, not for a function, somebody else always stops and joins you, you look up at the Wall and your child is not there alone, unfortunately. You think you go up there you can talk to your son, you can talk to his friend, and unfortunately some of his friends might be up. There I have some of what I call my almost sons up there and one man said he talks to all of them up there. He said his son is with everyone and I like to think that they are all up in heaven working on trying to find a way to help us down here, to stop it. The Wall, I can add to it, I can add the names and we can continue adding poems and flowers and pictures. If we lose that building, if we don’t get the lot next to it, it is going to be a tradgesty. It means so much too so many people not just those of us who have family up there, but people in the community who live there. They know about it all the time because they see it, day cares that bring their kids up there to see the Wall and schools come by. It’s just amazing; it’s more than I thought it could be. I didn’t imagine what it has grown to be.